Lately, there have been calls to change this, as some have been calling for NATO’s direct expansion into the Asia-Pacific region. In February 2022, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said NATO should not be constrained to Europe. He said it should be allowed to expand to anywhere in the world.
In April, British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss was more specific, saying that NATO should get actively involved in the Asia-Pacific region. However, the United States, as part of its increasingly confrontational and militaristic foreign policy, seems to have a different path in mind.
In 2017, in response to a surging Chinese economy and increased Chinese involvement on the international stage, the United States revitalized the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (the Quad for short) which had previously fizzled out of existence in 2008.
The Quad, made up of Australia, India, Japan, and the United States, is a military organization that has often been compared to a smaller NATO in Asia. The member countries routinely have military exercises together and military leaders of the member countries meet to coordinate with each other
In the years since 2017, the Quad has tried to expand via the so-called “Quad Plus Meetings”. Among the countries invited to participate in these meetings are countries like Israel and Brazil, both of which have no border with the Asia-Pacific region.
As part of this expansion, the United States has repeatedly lobbied Vietnam to allow the U.S. military to build a naval base on Vietnamese territory. Despite the Vietnamese government’s repeated rejection of such a plan, it has so often been written about in the “Western” press that many people incorrectly think that Vietnam has capitulated to the pressure from Washington, D.C.
